A/N: I really wanted to call this fic 'The Whore Whisperer' but I wasn't sure if that would comply with the website's guidelines. Mickey works with the police in this story but I swear that isn't as OOC as you'd think. And Ian doesn't seem very bad-ass at the beginning but will gradually regain his badassery as it goes on. This fic takes place ten years after the end of season 5 when Ian breaks up with Mickey, and hopefully after season 6 will be completely AU because Mickey and Ian will get back together and everything will be amazing and happy for them (I'm deluded, I know).
Warnings: Canon-typical swearing, violence, and discussion of prostitution, drugs and abuse. Brief mention of child sex-slaves in the context of a previous police investigation-nothing specific or graphic (appears in later chapters). Mentions of bipolar disorder and mentions of a suicide attempt in later chapters. Relatively tame gay sex in later chapters. Basically if you've actually watched the show Shameless and not been terribly offended, you're good. It's actually probably tame in comparison to the show. Incidentally, I don't own the show Shameless and am only writing this for entertainment purposes.
"You ready for this?" Jordan asked Mickey.
Mickey pulled the slide on his Glock and released it, and then nodded. If someone had told him ten years ago he'd be pulling shit like this, he'd have said they were bat-shit crazy. But here he was, going into a brothel with a cop to tear the place up.
Jordan gestured to the young cop with the battering ram to smash open the door, and then went in, hollering for everyone to get down on the ground. The six-man team burst in after Jordan and spread out. Mickey could hear their half-panicked, half-angry shouts as they rampaged through the place.
Mickey waited until he heard the all-clear then put his gun back in his holster. He wasn't a cop, not really, and he didn't want to get shot doing some stupid cop bullshit. He'd been shot three times before he turned twenty-one and he wasn't about to get shot again if he could help it.
"Mickey!" Jordan called.
He ran towards her voice and saw some sad-sack coked-out asshole sitting in a corner while Jordan tried to pull paperwork out of the toilet.
"You really tried to flush files? Paper ain't the same as coke, douchebag," Mickey said to the guy on the floor.
"Looks like we got someone with a real hard-on for keeping records. Why do criminals do that when they gotta know that's how we make the charges stick?" Jordan asked Mickey.
"Paperwork is the curse of middle-management everywhere. Bosses like to make sure their underlings ain't screwing them. I always said it was better to get fucked by your employees than to get fucked by the cops," Mickey said.
"And yet here you are, working for me," Jordan grinned. "Grab those evidence bags for me, would ya?"
Mickey held the bag open, feeling his own lips twitch with a reluctant smile. She stuffed the paper unceremoniously in the bag and Mickey zipped it up. "You gonna let jitterbug over there watch?" he asked.
"Miles, get this bitch in cuffs," Jordan called.
Mickey put on rubber gloves and proceeded to give the office what Jordan affectionately called 'the Mickey pat-down'. He had always had a fondness for hidden compartments and boobie-traps, so he reasoned that he probably wasn't the only one. He'd probably saved a crime scene investigator from losing a hand the last time he'd disarmed a trap, so Jordan let him do his thing. He ran his hand over the desk, then on the underside, then opened the drawers—
"You're going to do this all day, aren't you?" Jordan asked.
"Just give me a minute," Mickey said. "There's a safe in this room. Address this nice? I can fucking smell the money."
"Jesus," Jordan muttered, rolling her eyes. "I guess it's useless for me to tell you the team will strip that room eventually, ain't it? Find me out front when you get to the end of the rainbow, aight?"
Mickey ignored her and then moved to the wall. Around the back of a curio case he found a hinge, and then on the other side, a latch. It opened with the flip of a switch, and then he was confronted with a combination safe. "Yahtzee," Mickey muttered.
It wasn't like Mickey could actually crack a safe, and he wasn't even sure if their warrant would allow them to open it, so he checked the room for boobie-traps one last time and then made his way out to the main room. The brothel was in a huge penthouse, but nevertheless, the sheer number of clients and their 'dates' was a little surprising. There were probably twenty whores, both male and female, all in various states of near nudity, and about six men who looked like stockbrokers or something—presumably the clients, although sometimes it was hard to tell.
"Everyone here?" Jordan asked.
"There's a guy giving us some trouble upstairs. I don't know if he's on something or if he's fucking crazy," Layton said. "He's locked in the room throwing shit around demanding to see Jorez."
Phil Jorez was a British national and the owner of the penthouse. He had connections to drugs and prostitution and, judging by how quickly he'd climbed the ranks of the Chicago underworld, probably had connections to things that were much worse.
"Why'd you give the all clear if there was a guy locked in his room?"
"He wasn't locked in his room then. He hasn't got any weapons or anything. He fucking got the jump on me and then got away from me, is that alright with you?" Layton asked.
Mickey raised an eyebrow. It was true that there were rarely weapons in brothels, other than ones worn by the madam or pimp. He looked at Jordan. "Want me to go check this out?"
Jordan smiled. "You go do your thang, because you are the whore whisperer."
Mickey rolled his eyes. Generally what whores liked about him was that he was brutally honest—well, blunt—with them. They knew where he stood when he said shit. It didn't have fuck all to do with whispering.
He walked up with Layton, who knocked at the door. "Sir, you're going to have to come out now. We can and will break down the door," Layton said.
"I'm not like these other people. I don't work here. I just fucking live here," a muffled voice said.
"Well, you'll just have to come down to the station and we can sort all this out," Layton said.
Mickey was just about to ask why Layton didn't just knock the door down when there was a huge crash and several shouts and bangs. "What the fuck are you doing in there?" Mickey yelled over the noises.
"Who are you?"
"I'm the guy they sent to talk your crazy-ass down, so lucky me, right? Now you're my problem. So stop with the crazy shit and come the fuck out here."
To Mickey's complete surprise, he heard the sounds of something heavy falling to the floor and footsteps towards the door. The door was abruptly unlocked, and then opened just enough to show a partial face looking out. "Mickey?"
"Yeah, who the fuck—"
The door opened the rest of the way and Mickey was shocked to see Ian Gallagher standing in the doorway. Beyond the door Mickey could see he'd trashed the room, which was a whole lot nicer than the the bare cells the others had. Or had been nicer. The furniture was tossed around but it was quality stuff, and there were actual paintings on the wall. Ian looked like Ian always looked, amazing. He was wearing a t-shirt and paint-splattered jeans, and his hair was dyed black, but it was Ian fucking Gallagher.
Mickey pushed open the door and went in, closing the door in Layton's face. He heard some kind of mild protest from the officer, but it didn't really register. "Ian? No one's heard from you in years. Fiona and the rest of your sibs practically had a wake for you, you know? They think you're never coming back. They think you're dead. I thought you were dead. You mean to tell me you've been in Chicago this whole time?"
Ian shrugged. He looked almost young enough to pass for the seventeen-year-old he'd been the last time Mickey had seen him, but he must be twenty-seven, now. "You a cop?" Ian asked.
"No. But I work for them," Mickey said. He knew the old Mickey would have been ashamed to admit it, but things had changed a lot in ten years and he was doing work that had to be done. Ian didn't seem upset that he was with the cops, though.
"Don't let them take me in, Mick. This would be my forth strike. I could go away for twenty-five years. I swear, I'm not even working here. Phil, the guy who runs this place, is my boyfriend. Only he's married and he won't admit to being gay so I live here so we can meet up. No one knows he even visits me," Ian said.
Mickey didn't bother to contradict that; he was sure everyone who worked in the brothel knew exactly why Ian was there. He knew places like this and everyone knew everything about everyone else. "So if you don't work here, what do you do?"
"I run a video blog. You'd like it. I have lots of followers. It even makes a bit of money. I always hoped people back home would have stumbled on it and known I was okay."
"Yeah, you could leave that shit to fate, or you could just pick up a goddamned phone," Mickey said.
Ian shrugged.
"So, you don't mind being a mistress after all, huh?" Mickey asked.
Ian looked at the floor, sullen and still.
Mickey sighed, grabbed Ian's shoulder and led him to the door. He opened it and pushed Ian ahead of him, letting his hand fall to the small of Ian's back and then taking it off as Ian walked down the stairs.
Jordan was talking to Layton in the entryway and looked up at Mickey, shook her head and smiled. "The whore whisperer strikes again."
Mickey hadn't felt the urge to punch Jordan this strongly in years. He crossed the room in a couple of easy strides and grabbed Jordan's arm. "I need to talk to you."
"Right in the middle of a bust, Mick? Seriously?"
"Now, Jordan," he said.
She rolled her eyes at his dramatics and pulled him into an adjacent room. "What the hell, Mickey?"
"You can't take that guy in," Mickey said.
"What? Look, Layton said you knew him, but—"
"This isn't an 'I know the guy I owe him a favor' thing. This is an 'I can't be on a team that puts him away' thing. If you arrest him, I'm out. Deal breaker. He walks or I do," Mickey said.
"You're not just a CI anymore, Mickey. You're an employee. You can't just walk. Anyway, if he really was just some whore I'd let you take him out of here in a minute, no questions asked. But he's Jorez's boyfriend. He's got an in with the guy and we've got to take advantage of that," Jordan said.
"He said it'll be his forth strike," Mickey said.
"Prostitution isn't even a felony," Jordan said. Mickey didn't argue, although he knew that if you'd been charged with prostitution several times in the past it could become a felony charge. She sighed. "Look, the fact that he's worried about going away makes him an even better person to lean on."
"Lean on some other fucker," Mickey said.
"How do you know this guy? Can you trust him?"
Mickey pushed his fist against his lips, thinking hard. He had no idea if he could trust Gallagher. He had even less clue if he could trust Jordan with Gallagher. "We were on the same little league team. We went to school together and were neighbors our whole lives. Oh yeah, and he was my first boyfriend and even though he dumped my ass I still love him more than breathing," Mickey said.
Jordan whistled softly. "When's the last time you saw him?"
Mickey shrugged. "Ten years ago. He was in the middle of breaking up with me and his sister chased me all over the neighborhood with a gun until she managed to get a shot into my right shoulder. By the time I got out of the hospital he'd fucked off and we couldn't find him."
"Your ghetto sounds so much more entertaining than my ghetto ever was," Jordan snorted.
"Do we have to book him?" Mickey asked.
Jordan stared at the door behind Mickey, thinking hard apparently. Mickey gave her time. Finally, she said, "You think you can get him to talk?"
Mickey shook his head. "There's something fucked up going on here, I know that much. Gallagher was always a tough kid. In a lot of ways he was tougher than me. Wasn't afraid of anything. So what's he doing holed up in a brothel as some two-bit gangster's favorite lay? It doesn't make sense. It doesn't jive with who he is. I can't guarantee I can get him to cooperate because I can't see the guy I remember in him."
Jordan threw up her hands. "So I shouldn't let you take him out of here, then? Is that what you're saying?"
"Gallagher came from my neighborhood. He's about as inclined to help the cops as I am—or was, you know, before. I don't think you have a chance at getting him to turn against Jorez if you arrest him and take him down to the station. I think Jorez must have something on him for Ian to even be with him at all; something worse than prison, probably. I can't promise you I can get him to talk, but I can promise you that he won't talk to anyone but me."
"Fine," she said. "You take him home, though. You make him talk to you. You don't just send him off on his merry way. Did you at least find the safe?"
"Yep. It was hidden behind the curio case. I left that shit open but someone still has to crack the safe."
"I'm sure the brain-trust working in that office had the combo written down somewhere. You can find it when you're going through all the toilet-stained paperwork tomorrow," Jordan smiled.
"Yeah, yeah. I'm your bitch and I know it," Mickey said.
They went back into the entryway and Jordan gestured to Ian. "Take his cuffs off. He's being released into Milkovich's custody for the time being. But Mr. Gallagher, if you disappear, I'll put a warrant on you so fast you won't know what hit you."
Ian nodded, and looked at Mickey, the expression on his face strange.
"Let's go, Gallagher," Mickey said.
